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SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Literary Bilingualism as Cosmopolitan Practice: Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and Nancy Huston A Dissertation Presented by Lyudmila L. Razumova to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature Stony Brook University May 2010 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Lyudmila Razumova We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Sandy Petrey, Professor, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies and European Languages, Dissertation Advisor Robert Harvey, Professor, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies and European Languages, Chairperson of Defense Patrice Nganang, Associate Professor, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies Nicholas Rzhevsky, Professor, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies and European Languages Timothy Westphalen, Associate Professor, European Languages, Outside Member This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Literary Bilingualism as Cosmopolitan Practice: Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and Nancy Huston by Lyudmila L. Razumova Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature Stony Brook University 2010 This dissertation addresses the phenomenon of literary bilingualism in the late 20th – early 21st centuries. It investigates why and to what effect language is appropriated by individual authors in different historical situations, and how a body of work produced by the same author in two languages articulates the relationship between the nation and the world. I posit that sustained practice of bilingual writing charts a special space on the maps of national and world literature and presents an important dimension of emergent cosmopolitanism. Existing literary and social practices inform and develop the notion theoretically and practically and illuminate new dimensions of cosmopolitanism as a constant and deep engagement with the other. I argue that the unease with the status of bilingual writing derives largely from the Romantic model of mapping language to a nation. I treat cosmopolitanism as a deliberately chosen state and a laborious search for a new sense of home and identity in the multiplicity of texts. My study focuses on narrative, thematic and linguistic strategies that the writers of my investigation employ to create a new linguistic persona in a world that is rethinking the very notion of linguistic and national identity. Instead of suggesting another framework for theorizing cosmopolitanism, I demonstrate how these strategies employed by bilingual writers can precede shifts in the individual and public imagination. To begin, I construct a framework for theorizing literary bilingualism by borrowing selected categories from the methodology of linguistic personality in cognitive linguistics and modify them for bilingual writers. Then, I closely read the authors’ selected texts in both languages and examine the changing idea of exile and belonging for the three writers. Chapters two and three dwell on the formal writing and reading strategies that the authors devise in order to correlate several realities, to disrupt narrative stability, and to underscore the simultaneous presence of multiple discourses and languages that never dissolve into pathology. Finally, I review problematics of self-translation and discuss how the authors’ interlingual practices illuminate its major theoretical issues. iii Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................................. IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................................................ VI INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................1 BILINGUAL WRITING AND COSMOPOLITANISM................................................................................................1 LINGUISTICS, LITERARY BILINGUALISM AND THE THEORY OF LINGUISTIC PERSONALITY .........................12 The Theory of Linguistic Personality .......................................................................................................15 CHAPTER 1: VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S GIFT OF EXILE.....................................................................23 TRANSFORMATION OF EXILE...........................................................................................................................23 Spiritual Exile and Emigration as Apostasy.............................................................................................24 Genre and Exile..........................................................................................................................................28 LITERARY BILINGUALISM AS A SPECIAL DISCURSIVE PRACTICE: DAR (THE GIFT) AND PALE FIRE .........30 Peculiarities of Lexicon in Nabokov’s Dar (The Gift) and Pale Fire .....................................................41 Thesaurus....................................................................................................................................................47 Intertextuality and Intratextuality in The Gift and Pale Fire...................................................................55 LITERARY BILINGUALISM AS TRANSLINGUAL SYNTHESIS ............................................................................66 CHAPTER 2: IMAGINING ESCAPES FROM THE PRISON-HOUSE OF LANGUAGE.................72 BILINGUAL WRITING AND THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE...................................................................................72 INVITATION TO A BEHEADING: DOUBLE LIFE OF THE WRITER......................................................................81 TOPOGRAPHY OF COMMENT C’EST/HOW IT IS...............................................................................................89 FICTIONAL COSMOLOGY IN INVITATION TO A BEHEADING AND COMMENT C’EST AS A SPACE OF TRANSLATION ..................................................................................................................................................97 Neoplatonism in Nabokov’s and Beckett’s Work....................................................................................97 ESCAPES FROM THE PRISON HOUSE OF LANGUAGE .....................................................................................105 Iconicism and Autocommunication ........................................................................................................109 Language as a Math Problem ..................................................................................................................120 Forming an Impossible Community - ImagiNation...............................................................................126 CHAPTER 3: POLYPHONY AND SCORDATURA IN NANCY HUSTON’S WRITING ...............133 STRANGER TO AUTHENTICITY.......................................................................................................................140 BILINGUAL WRITING AND MUSIC .................................................................................................................144 Musicality in Literature ...........................................................................................................................146 Polyphony in Bakhtin and Huston ..........................................................................................................150 PRODIGE: POLYPHONIE ..................................................................................................................................154 Music and Speech in Prodige ..................................................................................................................159 Intolerable Polyphony..............................................................................................................................167 SCORDATURA AND THE DIVIDED WRITER ...................................................................................................171 Instruments des ténèbres/Instruments of Darkness................................................................................171 Cultivating Strangeness ...........................................................................................................................177 POLYPHONY: POETICS OF BI-LANGUE .........................................................................................................183 Polyphonic Reading .................................................................................................................................196 CHAPTER 4: SELF-TRANSLATION.........................................................................................................200 PROBLEMATICS OF SELF-TRANSLATION AND LITERARY BILINGUALISM ...................................................200 TOWARD NON-THEORY OF SELF-TRANSLATION ..........................................................................................211 VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S METARMORPHOSES AND SELF-TRANSLATION......................................................217